The Writing Prompt Boot Camp

Descort: Poetic Form

Recently, I shared 11 French poetic forms on the blog, but there are still many more to share, including today’s form: descort!

Descort Poems

The descort differentiates itself from other forms by differentiating its lines from other lines within the poem. That is, the main rule of descort poems is that each line needs to be different from every other line in the poem.

A descort poem has different line lengths, meters, avoids rhyming with other lines, no refrains, and that goes for stanzas as well. In other words, no two lines in a descort should look like each other, and the same could be said for each descort.

Note: This is different than free verse, because even free verse may occasionally have similar line lengths and meter. However, descort is very intentional in its variability.

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8 thoughts on “Descort: Poetic Form”

How to make music of a burl.
This is an art gallery, don’t even think of music.
She found it in the land of ripe apples.
The Pony Express shook its roots, riding through.
Vibrations can travel all the way up
the trunk and flutter the leaves.
Remember when we got lost in the depths of canyon.
Big-leaf maple green-golden against dark.
Nature makes its own patchwork and swirls its designs.
You’re mixing genres again.
I was speaking of music, no, of art,
this is a muddle.
This is the picture of your mind that sings.

I thought it might be a modern invented form, but no–this babe’s been giving headaches for a long time. Name’s an old French word for discord or discordant. Coming from a musical tradition, I doubt they were as herky-jerky as what I came up with. But it’s an interesting challenge, no?